This blog highlights Copyright, Fair Use, Patent, Trademark, Trade Secret and "Open" Movement-related topics—Open Access, Open Data, Open Government, Open Software, Open Science, Open Education—which are explored in the LIS 2184: Intellectual Property and "Open" Movements and LIS 2194: Information Ethics graduate courses I teach at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information.

Friday, August 25, 2017

You can’t trademark yellow, Cheerios; , August 25, 2017

Cody Nelson, Minnesota Public Radio; You can’t trademark yellow, Cheerios"The Cheerios’ shade of yellow isn’t “inherently distinctive” enough to qualify for a trademark, the federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled this week.General Mills had spent the past two years trying to trademark “the color yellow appearing as the predominant uniform background color” on Cheerios boxes,Ars Technica reports.Turns out the Cheerios yellow is just too average. For intellectual-property regulators to deem a color trademark-able, consumers must consider it to have a certain “distinctiveness.”"